


A cad and a cheat

by deniigiq



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 04:04:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11798007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Sarah Rogers left for America on a Friday. Her baby boy was born on a Wednesday. And her husband died at the Somme.





	A cad and a cheat

**Author's Note:**

> I got caught up on the idea that Steve is definitely first-generation American and so few people talk about what that's like. I wanted to play with what his mama went through to get him to America. 
> 
> Note: I am going off the idea that Steve was born on July 4th, 1917. I know there's like, a thousand different birthdays for him but that's the one I like best. I also made the assumption that he was born a little premature.

Sarah Marie McGreen Rogers brought with her just a few things when she left Dublin in 1916.

She brought her scorn of warm weather and her mistrust of whistling on deck. 

She brought two dresses, an apron, three good pairs of socks, a worn-down set of boots, and 20 dollars stuffed in her brassiere. She brought the thin silver ring her Joey had given her on their wedding day three months ago. She’d already scuffed the thing scrubbing out the metal pots in the kitchen, trying to make 19.35 dollars into twenty the day before the ship set sail. Joey didn’t mind, told her that theirs were working hands and working hands were signs of pure hearts. A poet, that man, and a sailor. 

“Let’s go to Boston!” He’d cried, sweeping her into his arms after weeks at sea. He’d smelled of salt, fish, and bourbon. A little like gunpowder. “The buildings are beautiful, Sarah. Full of automobiles, full of trolleys, little farms all around. The people are friendly, the ports are busy, there’s plenty of work. My cousin lives outside the city; has two little boys--two and five-- bigger than Jackie and Tom and learning to sail already. What do you think, Sarah? Could you live in Boston?” 

No, she couldn’t live in Boston, and neither could Joey. They couldn’t afford it, with her exams and his union dues. Maybe New York, but she didn’t want to go. Joey’s face fell when she told him. 

“But why, Sarah?” 

She loved his stupid eyes and his stupid chin and his stupid nose, but Ireland was her home. Her mother had broken nails in Irish soil to feed her babes; her daddy, God rest his soul, and his daddy, God rest his soul, had soothed their horses in the cold mornings to buy shoes for the girls to go to school. What good was America, anyways, if there was no Irish blood or Irish breath in the ground or in the air. Not to mention, there was a war on, you stupid man. She wasn’t looking to die before her mam.

“But there is, Sarah. There’s plenty of Irish in Boston, plenty of Irish in New York. Scores of them. You can’t walk two feet without bumping shoulders with a countryman. Please, Sarah. If we make enough money, we can send some to your ma. Help her keep the farm, send Ann to school. If we like it, we can even bring your ma to New York. Get a little more Irish blood in America’s soil--settle the McGreens somewhere comfortable for once.”

He was a cad and cheat, using her mother like that. Fine, she’d think about it, if, she told him, and only if, she could finish her exams in Ireland. She’d come so far, and she wasn’t about to let anyone, not even the damned Kaiser, get between her and her license. 

“Of course, my dear,” He’d sung with his stupid eyes and his stupid lips, “God help the man that came between you and your exams.”

He’d told her to meet him in Cork in December, well on the way to the new year. It was bitter cold, the clouds billowing and the sea roaring and all she could think was “this is no time to set sail.” But Joey knew the seas better than she, so when he danced across the soaked wooden docks to meet her, she let him persuade her that it was a fine day to leave for America. 

Even though a storm was brewing.

Even though it was a Friday. 

 

Sarah brought with her to New York a brand new husband and a raging skepticism for the goodwill of Americans. She’d worked hard to organize those papers and yet the Americans at Ellis Island sneered at her. Asked her what she intended to do in New York. Asked her who she knew in New York. Asked her who she belonged to. 

The answer was Ireland, but she lied and said Joey. 

They rented a room in a place called Brooklyn, which Joey said was fantastic and Sarah decided was terrible. Bitter cold. She could see her breath inside the building. Nothing she did could warm the place up; she sewed curtains from old linens to hang over the windows, covered the floor in rag-rugs, bought feathers to make a down duvet. She stuffed newspapers into all of the empty spaces she could, and it was no use. Her neighbors were loud and unhelpful, just as wary of her and she was of them. She’d heard them talking on the landing: “The new tenants—the Rogers—they’re delicate folk, not used to city-living. They’ll be out of here come February.”

Brooklyn, Sarah decided, was terrible, but she would be damned before she gave these folks the satisfaction of her admission of that fact. She beamed at them when she saw them, told them about how wonderful Joey and her’s little room was, why have you seen the view of the city from our window. It is nothing like we ever could have seen in Ireland. Of course, you’d know that, oh wait, no you wouldn’t, sincere apologies my love, I always forget that you weren’t born there. Well, it’s a shame, but let me tell you, it almost compares to those rolling fields, almost makes you homesick. 

Sarah got a job with her license at a hospital a half an hour’s walk away. Joey found employment at the docks. The neighbors moaned on the landing, saying that it wasn’t right then, for a man such as Joey, who could clearly keep his job and earn enough for a family, to let his poor little wife slave away at the hospital. What kind of man was he to let such a pretty little woman dirty her skirts? Why, if they were Sarah, they couldn’t help but sneak a glance at Billy Jameson on the fifth floor; a man like that could surely occupy her better than that Joey Rogers. 

Joey told her it didn’t matter what the neighbors said, and anyways, love, we made it to February, we’ve already proved them wrong once. Although if you did go looking around at Billy Jameson, my dear, I wouldn’t blame you, a cruel man like me, making you use that damned certificate of yours to aid the sick. What a travesty. What an abomination. 

A few more months in and Joey and Sarah earned enough to move from their tiny room to a slightly nicer cold room two blocks down the street. The neighbors were of all sorts, but there were old and new Irish there who embraced the couple and doted on their new marriage as if it were their own. Sarah made friends with a flock of women who worked all throughout the city. They told each other tales of handsy employers and ridiculous demands of men gearing up to go to war. One of the women mentioned once that it would sure be nice if they could take their grievances to Congress and a hushed murmur of agreement fell over their little crowd. 

“One day,” Maisie Adams from 2D told the room firmly, “one day we’re going to. And there won’t be a man in New York who could stop us.”

Sarah found herself part of a somewhat revolutionary crowd. She found herself standing on a few street corners with these lovely ladies, handing out pamphlets and cajoling passerbys with demands for women’s suffrage. The well-off ladies organizing the events looked down upon their group and grumbled among themselves about how women’s suffrage looked less appealing when barked out in an Irish accent, but the women of their rickety little building kept on calling. 

Joey smiled sunshine smiles at her when she came home from the streets, picking pebbles out of her hair and dripping wet with “accidental” gutter water.

“Give ‘em hell, darling,” he told her. 

 

Joey’s baby brother Benny got bullied into service in August of 1916. Benny was only seventeen years old, but he lied on his paperwork and shipped out to France on a boat with a death wish in the shape of a rifle. Joey held the letter telling them this in his hands for a long time. Sarah, perched in the window in her shortest skirt drinking cold coffee from a mug, watched him read and reread the letter. She watched how the stupid brow she loved furrowed and she watched as determination settled more and more firmly in his eyes. He was going after Benny.

“I’ve got to go after him,” Joey told her, whirling around as if the thought had just struck him. She set down the mug and climbed off the window sill. 

She walked up to him and they wrapped arms around each other. She laid her head on his chest, just above his heart and he pressed his jaw to the very top of her head. They stayed like that for a while, their body heat unbearable in the swelter of August, but both withstood it. 

“You’re going to die, Joseph Rogers,” she told him. He said nothing for a long time, but combed his fingers through her long blond hair, pulling waves of it out of the tight bun she’d arranged it in.  
“I couldn’t let him die on his own,” Joey told her, “He’s seventeen, Sarah, a child. I damn near raised the boy myself, I can’t let him die by himself. And in France, no less. No man should have to die in France.” 

He was trying to make her laugh, but it broke the dam and she sobbed against his shoulder. He guided the two of them down to the bed. 

“Sweetheart, darling, please look at me,” he begged. Sarah did, trying to clear the tears from her eyes so that she could start to memorize his face. She started with his thick brown hair; she pushed her hands through it and cupped his strong jaw. His eyes were as blue as the Atlantic, as all of the oceans in the world. They were also as full of tears. 

“If it was anyone else, you know I wouldn’t go,” he told her as the room faded to orange with the dimming sun. “I don’t want to leave you, I never want to leave you, I can’t leave you. But this is my brother, and who would I be if I let him go alone.”

“You’d be Joseph Rogers,” Sarah told him. “And I’d love you no less.” 

“I’ll be paid in the Army,” he said, “better than at the docks. I’ll send the money back to you and we can save to bring your mother over to stay with you. And as soon as the war is done, I’ll come flying back here. It can’t be much longer now, love. It can’t last much longer. The American army, they’re fresh. They’re strong. We’ll bring it to a close. And I’ll come right back to you.” 

She knew he was going to die, but what could she do but agree to let him go. It wasn’t her choice to make and if it had been her in his shoes, she would have done the same. She nearly had when her mother wrote to her of her brother’s death and her sister’s voluntary service. She’d nearly thrown her whole new life to the wind to go back to Ireland, to volunteer as a nurse and make sure she wouldn’t lose another sibling. Joey told her he’d help her go, he’d help her pack, when did she want to leave. But her mam said no, she needed at least one of her babies to be safe. Stay in Brooklyn, my dear. 

Joey left on fucking Friday. 

 

Joey wrote to her daily and she wrote back, although the letters did not always reach them in time or in order. He made it through training and was given a two-week stretch of leave. Private First-Class Joseph Rogers warmed her bed for two weeks before he left for France. He promised her postcards and stories and letters, but he didn’t promise her to return. They’d gotten news from Ireland: two of his brothers and the last of hers were dead in France. Her mother was inconsolable but would not have Sarah come home. Joey’s sister begged him not to go. He told her he’d make sure their brothers’ bodies would make it home. 

Two months later and Sarah had to sit down on her shift at the hospital. Her patient looked more worried about her than himself. He flagged down one of her sister nurses while she clutched at the sheets of the cot and tried not to vomit. Her colleague helped her to a basin. She thought of the sandwich she’d eaten while she’d pulled on her coat. Maybe she’d avoid canned meat in future; she’d have to find another cheap sandwich filling though and she frankly just didn’t have the energy. 

She recovered enough to finish out her shift and fell spread-eagled on her and Joey’s bed without even taking off her shoes. She continued to suffer food poisoning over the next few days and bitched thoroughly at the ills of canned meat in letters to her mother and Joey. 

Joey paid a guy in Florida to mail her a crate full of oranges. Her mother cooed over his antics and hummed and haw’ed at her plight. She was of the opinion that Sarah had gotten sick because she’d worn trousers the other day when she’d gone out with her radical group of ladies. Her secondary suspect was the bicycle Sarah had bought to ride to work. No matter how many times she explained that No, ma, bicycles don’t work like that, her mother remained adamant: no bicycle, no stomach trouble. Also, drink ginger tea. Or mint tea. 

Tea. No. Sarah Rogers was an American now, she had the papers to prove it, and Godamnit she would drink coffee.

Coffee was an awful idea. A truly, stunningly awful idea, she reminded herself as she curled over the basin in the nurses’ quarters. Whiskey. Whiskey was the best idea. 

Martha Peters watched her from the only table in the room. 

“Oh honey,” she said.

“Not a fucking word,” Sarah told her.

 

“Twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern, Rogers,” the charge nurse chided her with a raised eyebrow. Martha Peters, Jenny Lowell, and Roxanne Barker gave her sympathetic looks from the table.

“I’m sorry, ma’am. It must be something wrong with the canned meat, ma’am. It’s so hard to find a replacement, I’ve tried three different kinds and still—“ why was the charge nurse looking at her like that. What did that mean. 

“I’m sure.” 

“Ma’am?” 

“Rogers, you are an excellent nurse.” Where the hell was this going please, she hoped, don’t be going where it seems like it is going.

“Thank you, ma’am?”

“And I think you should take the rest of your shift off.” 

“Ma’am? Have I done something wrong?” And now she was being fired. And here she thought she’d finally gotten everything under control. She’d just gotten caught up on rent. The charge nurse, Theresa Marsten was her name, looked at her with pity in her eyes. 

“No, sweetheart,” her whole demeanor changed and Sarah got the feeling that this was what Nurse Marsten was like was she was just being Theresa. “Have you spoken to a doctor?” 

Sarah shook her head. She had not spoken to a doctor, no, she’d spoken to her mother who was not to be trusted with a dead cat. (She’d also spoken to Joey who told her to write his mam, but she’d be damned before she’d ask that woman for anything).

“Can I take a look at you?” Nurse Marsten asked. No. No, she absolutely could not.

“Of course, ma’am,” she said. 

“Have a seat,” Nurse Marsten indicated to the table where Martha popped up and offered her chair, “and take off your smock.”

Sarah did this and one of the girls took her uniform and folded it onto the table neatly. Sarah felt an entirely different kind of queasiness in her belly as Nurse Marsten settled down next to her and felt for her pulse. She asked her to stand up straight and she examined her posture. She pushed firmly into her belly and hips. The queasiness became so cold.

“How long has this been going on?” She asked. Sarah's throat was closing.

“The vomiting? About a week now, ma’am.” 

“What time of day do you feel the most ill?” Sarah swallowed hard.

“Just about the end of my shift, ma’am about 18:00.” Oh god, no please. 

“When was the last time you were…with...your husband, sweetheart?” Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. 

“He had leave from the army two months ago, ma’am.” Her voice was cracking. Oh god. Oh god. Oh no.

“So, two months ago, eight weeks ago then?”

“Yes. Ma’am.” Jesus, please.

“Sarah.”

“Yes, ma’am?” Please, Jesus, please.

“You know what this is, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Oh honey,” Martha sighed and leaned over to place a hand on her shoulder. Sarah couldn’t help it, she let the tears fall, hot, burning, through her lashes and down her cheeks. Martha rubbed the space in between her shoulders, where a weight Sarah never realized she’d been carrying lay. She heard Nurse Marsten sigh. 

“Sarah,” she said softly. “This is good thing,” 

“How could it be?” she sobbed. “My Joey—my Joseph is going to die. I feel it, ma’am. I feel it in my bones. I can’t—I can’t—“

“You are not the only one going through this,” Nurse Marsten told her abruptly. “Women have been birthing the babes of soldiers for centuries. If thousands of other women can do it, so can you.”

Sarah choked and sobbed, could feel Martha’s hands on her back, but couldn’t make herself stop. Couldn’t believe this was happening. Wasn’t ready. 

She hadn’t put any nails into this American soil, hadn’t soothed any horses at dawn. She couldn’t have this child yet—not here. 

Martha walked her home. 

And she wrote to Joseph on a Friday. 

 

Joseph told her that she could have the babe whether she damn well pleased and was overjoyed to hear the news. His letter was full of questions, full of dreams. He told her he wouldn’t—couldn’t die when he had a wife and a baby to come home to. Told her that he’d told everyone who would listen that he’d be a father when he got back. 

He wrote to a guy to send another crate of oranges to her. They were almost too sweet. Her belly grew and she sketched a few images to send to Joseph. She wasn’t the most talented artist, but he loved them all the same. He sounded haggard in his letters more and more, so she did her best to remind him of what was waiting for him. 

She got sick five months in and found herself in tremendous pain. She sobbed through the first few hours as quietly as she could, but Betty in the room next to hers and Gertie in the room below heard her. They gathered the ranks and bullied their way into her room to cuddle with her while she struggled through. 

“Sarah, honey, you gotta know that sometimes this just happens,” Frieda Owens told her gently from her elbow. “Sometimes a baby just isn’t meant to be born.” Frieda had three children, had been through five pregnancies. Sarah didn’t even want to think about the option. This baby needed to be born, it had to be born. She moaned in pain. 

“Darlin’, would your mama make you feel better? Where’s your mama, darlin’? I’ll go get her right now,” Mary-Clarice said from her knee. 

“She’s—“ Sarah gritted out “in Dublin.” There was a collective sigh. 

“Alright, that’s not helpful,” Betty grumbled. 

Despite her temper and general unpleasantness, the ladies stayed with her through the night, until the pangs stopped. She rubbed her expanding stomach and determined to blame the whole thing on Joseph. 

Joey took the blame happily and fussed over her in his letters. He wrote that he missed her sorely and that they’d finally gotten to France where things were indeed dismal—more than dismal actually but he didn’t want to talk about that. He begged her to look after herself and asked her what she wanted to name the baby. He preemptively informed her that he wouldn’t agree to “Pest,” “Mistake,” “Joseph,” or “Albert.” He liked Branden, Aiden and Benjamin. 

Something felt deeply wrong about his letters and Sarah lay awake at night thinking about them as she held her belly. 

 

She went into labor a month early, to the surprise of her ladies and her nurses. Everyone she knew, it seemed, was crammed in her and Joseph’s tiny room. It was unbearably hot, first from the July weather and made worse by the boiling and re-boiling of water. She screamed and twisted and bowed and stretched and nothing seemed to still the pain. The men and children of the building stood out in the street and on the landing, trying to block out her moans with their hands or cigarettes and she felt a little bad for disturbing them, but not enough to stop. 

Martha and Betty convinced her to try walking a little, but that only made everything worse. In hindsight, it probably made things easier and faster, but in the moment, it made everything worse. She screamed and moaned for hours and hours and at the end of the worst pain she’d felt in her life, she held the tiniest child she’d ever seen. 

A baby boy. He didn’t start squalling for several minutes and Sarah, though struggling to keep conscious, felt her newly empty stomach drop. Her heart started swelling as Martha and Betty and Jenny cleaned out the baby’s nose and lungs. When he started wailing, her chest felt inadequate for the size of its occupant.

She named him Steven and he was born on a Wednesday. 

 

Joey was beside himself. He loved her and he loved Steven and he loved the ladies who helped them and he loved all of the men in his platoon. Sarah drew him a little sketch so that he’d have something to use to imagine his baby by. Steven was an easy baby, although he breathed like it was a chore. After several nights of panic and questioning her own instincts and abilities, she took him to Nurse Marsten and was informed that the poor thing had an infection already. Keep him warm and keep him clean and it will go away with time. 

It did. And she fell in love all over again. 

 

Steven was six months old and Sarah was trying desperately to keep him warm when Joey wrote her that Benny was shot and killed in the trenches in the Somme. The letter was crumpled and filthy and, where her husband had dropped tears, it was blurred. She held Steven in one hand and the letter in the other, but was shocked into stillness. Steven, not at all a good eater but very good at reading his mam’s moods, squirmed and cooed. At her lack of attention, he reached a tiny hand up to mash against her cheek and the tears running down it. His warm touch shook her out of her shock and she took his little hand and kissed his palm. 

Where Benny went, she knew, her Joey would follow. Steven would not meet his father. There was nothing to do. She bounced her Steven—her Stevie--in her arms, and sang to him in the language of their people. She told him stories to soothe his wailing, whispering the deeds of Cû Chulainn and fairies and sometimes, the deeds of his daddy, the sailor from Dublin. With his brown hair and his blue eyes and his sailor’s callused hands. She told him how his daddy Joseph was the bravest man she ever knew, how he brought them to America, joined the army, and ran to France to fight alongside his brother. She told him how happy he was that Steven was born and how proud he was be of his precious son. 

His precious son. Steven looked nothing like his daddy. The shape of his eyes, the color of his hair, the pout in his lips, it was all Sarah. Instead of an ocean in his eyes, Steven had the sky. 

On February 18th, Sarah got the letter. 

Joseph died on a Friday.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
